The Sound After Rain
by misscam
Summary: She distantly remembered a summer with her mother, laughing at the rain against the window and as the rain died away, running outside to catch it. Laura and Sara Sidle, in the stillness after rain. [GSR.]


The Sound After Rain  
by Camilla Sandman

Author's Note: For hadria, as requested. References to Sara's mother, whose back-story was alluded to in season five.

II

Laura Sidle was dead.

She stared at the phone, the words still echoing in her mind, growing in strength until the roar filled her, was her, erased her.

Laura Sidle was dead.

Sara Sidle wasn't sure she'd ever been alive.

II

Veronica Hendricks had been beautiful in life, but death and heat had claimed her beauty as theirs to ravage. Only the traces of beauty lingered, where the insects had not yet done their work.

"I think she's been out about a week," Grissom said and Sara only nodded. He listened to the insects. She listened to the dead.

The desert wavered as she looked around. It was summer, and heat was a cobweb all around, its fine threads clinging to all within reach. She could feel it every time she moved, every action seeming to demand more energy. She felt drained, brittle, dried out.

The words kept haunting her lips, but like a ghost there was no force to push them out. 'My mother is dead.' 'My mother died.' 'I was told my mother passed away yesterday.' Ghosts.

She let herself be filled by the dead instead. They were always beckoning, always whispering.

"No immediate signs of foul play," she commented, bending down to see something glimmering in the sun. A lone empty keychain with a cloud picture, almost like a souvenir from the sky.

"No immediate signs of natural death either," Grissom replied. "The evidence will tell us."

'It will give us the answers, but never the story,' she thought and bagged her find silently, the sun burning down on her.

II

A letter confirming her mother's death from her correctional facility arrived and Sara stared at it for a long time, touching it with a finger until the words were unreadable and her finger was black with printed ink.

She wondered if she could do the same with the words in her mind, the images, the sounds, the memories.

She sat still in her apartment and watched the heat break against her windows, the hum of the air conditioning keeping summer out. She distantly remembered a summer with her mother, laughing at the rain against the window and as the rain died away, running outside to catch it. Laura and Sara Sidle, in the stillness after rain.

She wondered if the memory was true or if she had invented it, desperate for something other than the screaming, the fear, and the blood to remember her mother by. She'd tried so hard to forget she'd forgotten if there were any good memories too.

The mind was treacherous and she was becoming very good at betraying herself.

II

The cause of Veronica Hendricks' death was revealed to be cyanide and Grissom looked almost excited and she let his enthusiasm drive her too. It was a sort of life they shared, him and her, between the yellow of the crime scene tape and the abyss that was human darkness. Not the life she had wanted, but a life still.

Veronica had none. Only the ghost of her life remained, in memories, pictures, home videos. Ghosts for her to touch through white gloves and brittle skin in the white light of the lab.

"Who would dress up as Princess Leia to her prom?" she remarked as she flipped through the year book, taking in the wide smiles and radiant innocence of those pictured.

"Someone who was in love with Han Solo," Grissom replied and she stared at him, trying to burrow into his mind.

"You've watched Star Wars?"

He shrugged. "I was young once too. Who did you have a crush on, Luke or Han?"

"Han, of course. You had your eye on Leia, I suppose?"

"No," he replied calmly, bending over a footprint from the desert. "I was in love with Jabba the Hutt. I wanted to dissect him so I could figure out his metabolism."

It took her a moment to realise she was laughing, laughing hysterically until it became dry sobs, but still no tears.

"Sara?" Grissom asked, his voice worried, but she didn't reply or look at him, just walked away, walked and walked and walked…IIClouds had filled the sky as parked outside her home, trying to feel nothing but the stillness within her. The ground seemed barren, the asphalt cracked and gashed, as if something deep within the earth was trying to claw out.

The sky broke finally, the clouds opening with what sounded like a roar of a beast, attacking the earth with water.

She stood still, halfway to her door, the rain falling as a shower of the sky on her. Washing her, cleaning her, crying for her. She had no more tears. She wasn't the sky that could rain on. She had no sea or wind that could bring new clouds. She was the desert, eroded and ancient and cold with night's touch.

"Sara!"

He stood in the rain too, she saw as she lifted her gaze, his greying hair already soaked, his car gleaming with water. His coat was dark where raindrops had fallen, but he was only looking at her. She knew no one else that could offer promises that were also lies in just one gaze.

"Go away," she muttered between frozen lips. "Go away."

"No."

"Sara. Tell me what's wrong."

"No!" she flung at him as he walked towards her, awkward and determined all at once.

"Yes," he said very quietly.

"I don't want you here."

"It doesn't matter. You need me here."

She wanted to scream at him, pour all her grief into sound and howl it into the world where it would leave her. She wanted to hit him until her knuckles bleed, until she was bled dry and could bleed on the inside no more. She wanted to crawl into his embrace until his skin was hers and she could feel nothing of Sara anymore.

"Sara," he said again, managing to make her name a caress and an order too and she fell against him, a wave against a rock.

She heard him sigh as he held her, a hand on her neck, another around her waist. He smelled of water and coffee, and the rain falling on his coat made a strange sort of rhythm she found herself breathing after. Fall. Pause. Exhale. Inhale. Fall. Pause.

"Sara," he whispered, her name sounding fragile in his mouth and then he kissed her until all she could feel was his lips and the rain, falling, falling, falling…

II

She lay in bed and listened to the rain against her window, the hum of her air conditioning, the breath across her skin. Grissom was resting his head against her naked back, not quite sleeping, not quite awake.

"Why didn't you tell me your mother had died?" he asked in a quiet voice and she watched the shadows play across her walls.

"I didn't want your pity."

"This is not pity," he replied, kissing her shoulder.

"Then what is it?"

"Understanding. My childhood…" he paused, as if battling for a moment before going on, "was not normal."

"I know," she said in a whisper. "I've always known."

"Yes. You know me too well."

That was why he feared her, she knew, why he still feared her and perhaps why she feared him too. But perhaps once in a lifetime, you could conquer your fears.

Silence fell. The rain died, the air conditioning faded, Grissom's breath became her breath and there was stillness embracing her.

This was the sound after rain, she realised. She did remember. She did have one innocent childhood memory with her mother, one moment of normality. She had the sound after rain.

And finally, she did cry and she felt his hand on her chin, gathering her tears as they fell silently.

II

A week later, Veronica's boyfriend, her Han Solo, was arrested for her murder. Sara watched it, leaning against Grissom's car, seeing Brass read the rights and ready the handcuffs. The heat was back, a blanket choking what it could, but she closed her eyes to it, remembering.

"You're smiling," she heard Grissom's voice, drifting across to her.

"Maybe I was thinking of something good," she replied, keeping her eyes closed.

"I hope I was involved."

"Maybe."

"I still think you should come to dinner tonight."

"Maybe."

"You can watch my _Full House_ DVDs," he tempted.

"You don't have a _Full House_ DVD collection."

"I do," he insisted. "Come and see the evidence for yourself."

She smiled faintly. Now, Grissom was pursuing her, as if they'd changed skin, as if he was making up for all she had tried by trying himself. She could push him away, repay the pain he'd given her by giving pain back. But it would never change the past. The words could not be erased. The memories could not come undone by trying to forget and forgetting them gave them all the more power when they came back.

They always came back, as the rain did, even when the heat seemed forever.

"Yes," she said and opened her eyes to him, his eyes greeting her. "But you don't have a _Full House _DVD collection."

"I do," he insisted again. "I borrowed it from Nick."

She laughed, and this time it stayed a laugh all the way to silence.

FIN


End file.
